How to Remove Raw Images From Apple Photos and iCloud
Although Photos does a nice job of keeping these paired photos together, it entirely drops the ball when dealing with them in the UI. Photos treats raw+jpg images as a single entity but only accounts for the primary or “Original” source. By default, raw+jpg files are treated as “JPEG” by the UI and are thus indistinguishable from plain jpg files from the same camera except for a little stacked “J” icon in the upper right corner. If you edit the photo and select “Use RAW as Original” in the Image menu, it becomes a stacked “R” and can be matched by Smart Folders.
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Smart Folders has a “Photo is Raw” search, but this only works then the “Use as Original” source is raw (which has to be done manually, one photo at a time)
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There ought to be some way to clean out your library, exporting the unwanted raw files and removing them from iCloud without deleting the companion jpeg files. But that’s really hard to do.
Kirk McElhearn writes:
Suppose you want to use RAW but don’t have the resources to use it for everything. If you are constantly turning it on and off you risk not having it on when it turns out that you wanted it. (This is also why it’s too bad that iOS no longer lets you lock HDR on.) Or maybe you want to work with RAWs, because of the extra adjustments they enable, until you’re done with a particular image. Either way, it seems reasonable to want to clean out excess RAW files later.